He arranged his differences with King and erased his open letter. http://arcadesushi.com/candy-crush-makers-settle-dispute-with-candyswipe-dev/

Likewise.

Well, that's nice to read. So after all, it was a misunderstading? Glad to hear that!

It would make sense if it were about a made-up word, or against a company trying to call itself Rebellion Software. However, this is about a common word used in an expressive manner. To quote the blog-post I linked to:

It's not about winning. Not at all. It's about a formal "complaint."

Let's say 10 years from now some game company comes out called REBEL ION and they make a great sniper game.

Rebellion will be in a much better position to argue their case if they have a documented track record of defending their trademark. (so I'm told by my old business law prof -- I'm not a legal person)

My prof told us to not take it personally if we made a company and someone sued us for trademark infringement. Suits go back and forth and get regularly dismissed just to make a documented public awareness that they intend to defend their trademark.


Check this out:
Question: What does it mean to take all reasonable steps to protect a trademark?

Answer: If a trademark owner fails to police his or her mark, the owner may be deemed to have abandoned the mark or acquiesced in its misuse. A trademark is only protected while it serves to identify the source of goods or services.

If a trademark owner believes someone is infringing his or her trademark, the first thing the owner is likely to do is to write a "cease-and-desist" letter which asks the accused infringer to stop using the trademark. If the accused infringer refuses to comply, the owner may file a lawsuit in Federal or state court. The court may grant the plaintiff a preliminary injunction on use of the mark -- tell the infringer to stop using the trademark pending trial.

If the owner successfully proves trademark infringement in court, the court has the power to: order a permanent injunction; order monetary payment for profit the plaintiff can prove it would have made but for defendant's use of the mark; possibly increase this payment; possibly award a monetary payment of profits the defendant made while using the mark; and possibly order the defendant to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees in egregious cases of infringement.

Of course, the determination of infringement is actually one that will be made by the court, so a trademark owner is simply using a best guess about whether or not infringement actually has occurred. That best guess may be a good one, based on experience and expertise, or it may be a bad one that doesn't reflect any of the legitimate defenses that might exist. The law doesn't require the mark owner to sue everyone; it just requires the owner to keep his mark distinctive.

(from: http://www.chillingeffects.org/trademark/faq#QID418 )

I don't disagree that it's douchish. But that's what a lot of companies do to take all reasonable steps to protect their trademark.

Would you like to buy a vowel? I am giving discount...for now.

Even notorious IP whoremongers like Games Workshop and George Lucas don't go that far, and if anyone has the right to trademark "Rebellion" such a ridiculous notion could be argued in Lucas' favor.

This reminds me of the people who say that game companies should get a majority of any profits made by gamers streaming their twitch feeds and posting LP videos on youtube. Ridiculous. Greed just breeds greed, unfortunately.

Actually they have a long history of it dating back to the 1980s

I didn't think they'd ever gone as far as trying to trademark common words, but it wouldn't surprise me.

And here I am, planning to invest in the newest DwarFs Army book, and I don't even play the game anymore, I just want the sauce.

Or even a Dungeon of Dredmor mod. (Not even kidding when I say I dove into the tutorials for how to make mods for it upon reading this whole conversation.)

And what I replied with is based on what I've read from multiple lawyers on the issue. Like I said, your comments touch on the truth (allowing a unique/strong trademark to be used by other companies can result in the mark entering the public lexicon as a general term and thus becoming significantly weaker), but it glosses over enough of the details as to still end up getting things very wrong, particularly with respect to cases like this (where the trademark is already incredibly weak due being a common word).

Additionally, filing multiple merit-less lawsuits in defense of a trademark doesn't improve one's chances for future trademark litigation, but on the contrary makes it more likely that the opposing party can get the suit dismissed in pre-trial motions (by being declared vexatious litigation).